Reddit mentions of Logicomix

Logicomix is a sort-of biography of Bertrand Russell, focusing on his attempts to establish the fundamentals of logic, with scenes of the authors, illustrators, and whatnot producing the book and debating their artistic choices while wandering through Athens. I think the art enhances the story- there's this beautiful splash page where a character sees a bomb go off that would be very difficult to convey textually. The format also allows them to be a little less of a timeline of events, and focus more on the story as a story, because comics aren't expected to be dry lists of events.

Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is a beautiful story about dysfunction, family, sexuality, and literature. I think Bechdel's writing is good enough that the story could have worked in another format, but Bechdel is a comic artist and uses her illustrations to powerful effect. There's a tenderness to her illustrations that I can't really explain. I know the last few pages say something important, but I can never remember it because all I can ever focus on is the way she's captured the image of a father pulling a daughter through a pool. There's so much care taken for each illustration that it feels almost invasive to look at. The obvious care taken also ads a certain depth to the chapters dealing with obsessive compulsive disorder. She's got a new book out, a sort of sequel called Are You My Mother but I haven't read it yet.

Alan Moore's Promethea is the one comic on this list that I don't think could work in any other format. One of the things it deals with is the nature of comics as a means of communication. There are rarely straight-up classical panels, and there's a lot of experimental stuff. I actually think it's one of the best 'first' for people who are hesitant about comics, because so much of it's about how comics differ from other art forms.

It's not so much about CS in general, it's more focused on encryption, but The Code Book by Simon Singh is a big recommendation - unlike the impenetrable tomes of many other CS books, It was easy to read and I learnt a fair amount about encryption. It goes into the history of encryption as well. In fact, it starts at the earliest examples of encryption we know of and builds up to modern day and potential future encryption techniques, which I thought was pretty cool.

If you like a lot of the really theoretical stuff (abstract logic, is a problem solvable, ect) you might like Logicomix. It's about the life of Bertrand Russel, his work, and the lives and works of his peers. It's a graphic novel, and it's a story, rather than just "a book about stuff", if you know what I mean. It's not entirely accurate, sometimes changing events that happened for the purpose of making a better story, but they address everything that they changed in the appendix, which was nice of them. Some (not me) would argue that it's more about maths than CS, but I certainly really enjoyed reading it and it's definitely relevant to CS.

Neither of these books are about CS per se, but both of them should be pretty relevant to anyone with an interest in CS - and both of them were good books in their own right.

I haven't read Genius yet, so I'll try that out. Thanks for the recommendation. I really liked Logicomix, a graphic biography about Bertrand Russell, so I think I'll give Feynman a shot too.

Do you have any strong interests? For example, I love math, and the book The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, which is a biography of Paul Erdos.

If you are interested in graphic novels, and they are allowed for the assignment, Logicomix is the quest of Bertrand Russell for an ultimate basis of mathematics, and how the journey of understanding can often lead towards obsession and madness.

If you're interested in physics, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman is a great book that is arguably a biography.

So, what are you most interested in?

Actually recently a graphic novel was made of Russell's life, called Logicomix. It's more about his life in the sense that he was a mathematician and later a logician and how he came up with Russell's Paradox etc. etc. It barely mentions his atheism. I did enjoy it though, although I think the writing was pretty weak.